The shocking story of how Amazon’s Alexa almost electrocuted a child

Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa has proved to be a beneficial assistant to its users worldwide, from setting alarms to playing the latest tracks at the drop of a hat. Its users are not shy to ask wacky, sometimes extremely hilarious questions with equally amusing answers reciprocated. However, a shocking incident involving Alexa and a toddler recently raised eyebrows. The child’s mother, Kristin Livdahl, shared the anecdote on her Twitter handle. Read on to find out what exactly happened. 

What did this scary incident involve? 
Kristin Livdahl’s 10-year-old daughter innocently asked Amazon’s Alexa Echo device to present her with a challenge. To this, Alexa shockingly challenged the young girl to plug in a mobile phone charger halfway into a charging outlet in the wall and touch a coin to its exposed prongs. Astonishing, right? Establishing contact between a metal and a live electrical connection is extremely risky. Its result is a nasty electric shock which can potentially lead to death. Asking Alexa for such challenges, especially this “penny challenge” was a trend which circulated around TikTok. It still remains undiscovered as to why the home-bot would ever suggest such a dangerous thing. 

Is any action being taken about this risky challenge? 
After concerns about this challenge were raised on social media, Amazon released a statement saying that an unfortunate bug in the device was the reason behind this odd, scary response. The company also ensured that the required changes have been made to fix the error and it will not be repeated in the future ever again. As of now, users have noticed that the function has ceased to work anymore. So, when a user says to the voice assistant, “Tell me a challenge to do,” there is no response.  

The device, in all probability, acquired the idea for this lethal challenge from an article online. This goes on to raise several concerns about how AI could be detrimental if left unregulated. A similar error was reported earlier where Google had displayed dangerous advice which was not medically-backed. The advice was in response to this for the question, “Had a seizure, now what?” Ironically, the information which showed up on the popular search engine included what not to do in case of a seizure.